Pre-Course Needs Assessment: Technical Writing

Your organization is considering several WordTask writing courses. To assist in the determination of a specific course or set of courses, please use the form below to let us know the needs and interests you have for training in writing skills.

There are no right or wrong answers to these questions. We will use your feedback in our discussions with your organization to tailor our training services to your needs and to the documents you routinely write.

Instructions

  1. Fill in the biographical data in “Information about you.”
  2. Answer the ten questions that follow by inserting text in the boxes provided. Text is required in all of the boxes; please enter NA in any box for which you do not wish to add a comment.
  3. Select the Send button to send the information to us or the Clear button to erase your entries and start again.

Thank you for taking a few minutes to provide us with this information. Your feedback will guarantee that the course addresses your specific writing interests.

Information about you

Name (req’d):
Company/Organization:
Email address (req’d):

Writing in your job

1. What is your job function?

2. What percentage of your total job time do you spend writing on technical matters? Include in this percentage the time you spend writing emails of several paragraphs or longer that deal with technical subjects.


3. What kinds of technical documents are you responsible for? (Select as many items as apply to you.)

Specification documents

Requirements documents

Product descriptions

Procedures

Functional descriptions

Additional comments on documents written:

4. How would you describe the readers of your documents? (Select as many items as apply.)

Peers who have the same technical expertise that you do.

Managers who require a non-technical view of the information.

Clients who require a non-technical view of the information.

End-users who perform specific technical tasks.

Readers who want to know how something works.

Additional comments on your readers:

5. What do you currently do to plan for writing your technical documents? Is it successful? List any problems that arise in your planning process.

6. Describe your writing process from start to finish.

7. Do you use the computer as a writing tool? If so, for what parts of the writing process? Is your source material available on line, allowing you to cut and paste from other documents, or do you have to transcribe information manually from source information?

8. In addition to revising your own work, do you ever have to edit the work of your colleagues?

Yes

No

Comments on editing the work of colleagues:

Improvement areas

9. What comments or complaints do your readers–such as managers, supervisors, or customers–make about your writing? Include in detail any issues of style, grammar, and the organization of your ideas.

10. Irrespective of what your readers say about your writing, what do YOU want to improve on by taking this course? Include things about writing that you find difficult, even if you do them well.

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